Title: Intra-pixel multispectral processing of magnetic resonance brain images for tissue characterisation

Authors: Clayton Chi-Chang Chen; Englin Wong; Hsian-Min Chen; Shih-Yu Chen; Jyh-Wen Chai; Ching-Wen Yang; San-Kan Lee; Yong-Kie Wong; Chein-I Chang

Addresses: Department of Radiology, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, No. 160, Sec. 3, Chung-Kang Rd., Taichung, 40705, Taiwan ' Remote Sensing Signal and Image Processing Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA ' Department of Biomedical Engineering, HungKuang University, No. 1018, Sec. 6, Taiwan Boulevard, Shalu District, Taichung, 43302, Taiwan ' Remote Sensing Signal and Image Processing Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA ' Department of Radiology, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, No. 160, Sec. 3, Chung-Kang Rd., Taichung, 40705, Taiwan; Department of Radiology, China Medical University, No. 91, Hsueh-Shih Road, Taichung, 40402, Taiwan ' Computer Center, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, No. 160, Sec. 3, Chung-Kang Rd., Taichung, 40705, Taiwan ' Department of Radiology, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, No. 160, Sec. 3, Chung-Kang Rd., Taichung, 40705, Taiwan ' Dental Department, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, No. 160, Sec. 3, Chung-Kang Rd., Taichung, 40705, Taiwan ' Remote Sensing Signal and Image Processing Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Room 231 Engineering/Computer Science Building, University of Maryland, Baltimore County 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA

Abstract: Magnetic resonance (MR) image analysis is generally performed by spatial domainbased image processing, referred to as inter-pixel image processing, which takes advantage of spatial correlation among sample pixels. Unfortunately, in many areas, several tissue substances are usually present and mixed in a single image pixel in which such an inter-pixel processing either fails or is ineffective. To resolve this dilemma, this paper develops an unconventional approach, called intra-pixel processing, which considers MR images as multispectral images where a multispectral MR image pixel is actually a pixel vector, of which each component is captured by a particular image pulse sequence used for MR image acquisition. Since the commonly used receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves cannot directly deal with the issues arising in intra-pixel processing, a 3D ROC analysis is developed by including a parameter t as the third dimension that represents abundance fractions thresholded by τ.

Keywords: 3D receiver operating characteristics; 3D ROC; inter-pixel processing; intra-pixel processing; linear spectral unmixing; LSU; magnetic resonance imaging; MRI; multispectral processing; brain images; tissue characterisation; image processing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCSE.2013.053090

International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering, 2013 Vol.8 No.2, pp.87 - 110

Received: 19 Oct 2012
Accepted: 19 Oct 2012
Published online: 27 Dec 2013 *

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